Eight Steps to Transfer Technology

                     Technology Transitioning
   Eight Steps to Successfully Refocus the Way You Do Business
     

If you manage a business and living in a shrinking marketplace, you may feel that
you lack the resources to survive.  Valuable and practical help is close at hand-at low or
no cost.  Help begins within your business with a question and answer exercise designed
to identify and organize opportunities you take for granted and orient you to develop
objective approaches to use the opportunities you find to create or expand revenues.
Transitioning (reuse of technology in areas not previously considered) exploits your
business' experience by making productive use of operational information that you thought
others knew about.  Most times people and businesses do not know about the things you
might offer for sale or franchise. 

Your dilemma is uncomplicated.  Uncle Sam or your state government, your
partners in a prior time, provide fewer services than you need to survive as a business and
maintain quality of life as it existed before.  You are on your own in a world that you are
unprepared to face.  You ask, "How do I do business in the commercial world?".  Rules
have changed over night.  People, foreign to the region, have lower labor costs and the
availability of freely shared technologies.  Worse the government that collects taxes from
you gives the technology away.  Accept the following suggestions as offered.  Try them.
They will open your mind to new opportunities to create jobs and revenues.  With tenacity
you will survive and prosper.  Dealing in commerce is easier than you think.  It takes only
eight steps to create a continuing commercial revenue stream.  No one can or will do this
job for you.  Be prepared for the shock of your life, you are much smarter than you
previously believed.

Eight Steps:

1.   Assess the activities of your plant from materials' storage to the daily operations you
     take for granted.  Things you take for granted in current operations are potential
     "cash cows."  Whether it is a favorite process or home grown cleaning compound,
     there may be people who need your products and skills.

2.   Select a problem/opportunity area for analysis.  Read newspapers, magazines and
     trade publications to find dozens of potential markets.  Each market need solutions
     you may take for granted.  Your hidden worth lays fallow.

3.   Analyze/define the problem/opportunity to decide if and how you or your firm and
     your ideas might capitalize on the need in the marketplace for the product you
     located.

4.   Establish objectives (goals you want to attain) and a plan concerning how you will
     tell the world about your genius solution.

5.   Search all available sources, first to learn if you have competitors and second,
     to help you, select areas for quick cash flow and return upon investment involved
     in making the product or idea available for sale.

6.   Choose potential matches of your idea and the needs you located in the    
     marketplace.  You might select a revenue creating winner.  Winners are the result
     of candid analysis of sales potential, good marketing plans for transitioning your
     accomplishment.

7.   Implement the marketing plans and prepare to execute the transfer from that which
     you always thought mundane to what someone else sees as a better way of doing
     a job yoy take for granted.

8.   Conduct a Post Audit.  Most products fail because the seller does not follow
     up to correct minor glitches by that generating bad "press" literally and by word of
     mouth.

Let's look at the eight steps in more detail:

1.  Assessing Needs and Establishing Objectives

     Business operations offer infinite opportunity for productivity improvement through
technology transitioning.  Technology Transitioning is your ability to identify a need for your
idea or a free idea in a place or industry no one else has addressed.  Free ideas are
available from hundreds of sources.  Listing all free sources will require another article.
Opportunities range from unused and shelved research results or processes to material
storage methods, special tool or cooking and cleaning device designs, production methods
in use on the factory shop floor and assembly/distribution strategies to get these new
products to potential customers.   New products can include methods to optimize machine
and process operations, reduce the cost of maintenance functions, speed work flow,
increase control of costs, or management procedures to audit and respond to production
problems.  Your business has dozens of potential "better mouse traps" that everyone "in-
house" has taken for granted for years.  Most firms in the forest, miss seeing the trees.  As
an example, Mr. Lasko sells a book called "Information U.S.A." that is no more than a
listing of items published free by the US Government.  Buyers pay $19.95 for information
provided by government freely for the asking.  The difference, Mr. Lasko knew who to ask.
His customers do not know where to look.

     Opportunities for new revenue streams are identified by assessment of marketplace
needs.  The process begins in-house by asking questions and listing answers; i.e., Where
are our bottleneck's? What things don't I like to do?  Work backlogs?  How do we deal with
them?  Do others need my skills?  List the skills you have that others might need.  Which
operations have the most failures or rejections?  Rework? How did I modify my failures to
save some component ingredients?  Again, list your unique solutions.  Where were
maintenance requirements excessive?  Setup? Creating a result?  How did I capitalize on
problem solutions?  Keep listing problems and solutions, each is a potential marketing
opportunity.   Are there potential problems with OSHA? , EPA?, that our plant solved? 
Notice how your list of potential saleable products is growing! .   What about absenteeism?
Turnover?  Complaints or grievances?  You have solutions to problems of everyday life,
list them.

     Do not be alarmed or dissuaded as the list lengthens.  You have created the wide range
of potential products your business operation has conceived over time.  When the
economy was good, it was not necessary to sell or consider selling things taken for
granted.  But now, this list will help you to gain confidence in your potential to survive in a
declining marketplace.   It is better to create a list that can be culled than limit yourself by
following preconceived ground rules that restrict opportunities for technology transitioning
to create money making products.  Anyway, you have generated a fresh overview of your
business potential.

2.  Selecting an Activity/Item for Analysis

     Having listed areas of opportunity, the next step calls for ranking items in terms of
suggested or potential marketability.  Cost savings is one means of measurement, but
some benefits cannot be described completely in dollars and cents.  Among these are lost
time, excessive maintenance, scrap, and absenteeism.  There is no one simple rule to
follow.  Your knowledge of your industry's skills could be detrimental to your success if you
allow yourself to be limited by perceived higher technology available from the billion-dollar
conglomerates or industry equipment/supplies purveyors.  Remember what is common
place in your industry might be unheard of in another market area, or industry.

     One approach to getting an objective assessment of opportunities for technology
transitioning, and establishing priorities concerning products, is to form an innovative
product development committee.  The committee should represent, at minimum,
management, product engineering, manufacturing engineering, marketing, purchasing,
accounting and the hands-on work force.  Depending on the size of your operation, there
may be as few as two members or as many as seven or eight helping the decision process.

     Including a senior  worker - or shop steward - has a twofold advantage.  It makes "doer"
experience available to the technology selection process and it establishes a
communications channel to the work force.  Employees learn why information is being
collected, how it will be used, and what is expected of them.   They obtain a benefit by
participating, namely saving their jobs or making a higher wage.  It should be made clear
that the prime goal is survival and growth.  Ask the people who benefit from how you do
things.  Don't be critical, be objective.  Saying "no" to an idea is the easy way out of
accepting responsibility for a transfer.

     In selecting a market for a first effort at technology transitioning, choose a market which
is  uncomplicated and accessible.  A homemaker who creates special pies or candies
might sell on consignment from a specialty food store in the neighborhood.  The chosen
first product should be high enough on one of the new revenue producing lists to offer a
significant reward to buyers, but not so complex as to risk failure in near term use.  Don't
attempt to sell something you cannot supply on a regular repeat basis.

3.  Analyze/Define the Problem/Opportunity

     Having selected a potential transfer product, explain or describe it in easily understood
terms that help you sell.  This can be a two-step exercise.  The first of step can be
performed by the entire productivity council.   It consists of establishing primary and
secondary benefits to the buyer that will be achieved by technology transfer of your product
to his operations.  Primary conditions relate to physical, financial, and work force
improvements.  Secondary conditions could also be beneficial, but you would not commit
more than nominal funds to them.  Here are examples of seven kinds of conditions,
qualified hypothetically:

     1.  Use same space and cube               (primary)
     2.  Simple equipment                            (secondary)
     3.  Design flexibility                              (secondary)
     4.  Small investment                             (primary)
     5.  Use available machines                    (primary)
     6.  Train existing staff or family              (secondary)
     7.  Meet health and safety code             (primary)

     Having established the benefits of technology transitioning accruing to the buyer from
using the selected product, the second step can be made by a select group from the
committee mentioned above.  The second step is to complete the task of defining how you
will accomplish transitioning.  Use this basic research about the product to identify your
marketing thrust.  You must plan.  Attempting to create a new product is not a random task.
Those who do not plan fail.

4.  Establish Transitioning Marketing Objectives

     Your market thrust should state what beneficial improvement will be accomplished and
its cash or quality of life benefit to the buyer.  However, before getting down to details, let's
consider an approach to stating marketing objectives that will increase your success ratio.
This practice will introduce you to applicable technology you would not have examined
otherwise.  It involves inquiry to a resource of vast capabilities that is little used by
operational managers.  It is the Science and Technology Division of the U.S. Library of
Congress.  Appealing to this resource calls for asking simple, plain language, questions
using broadly recognized business technology.  Ask about your idea.  Does a similar
product exist?  Has someone else developed and sold your idea?  Your definition of your
product should be amplified by underscoring key words and footnoting synonyms for each
word - as many as possible.  The more information you can provide, the better are your
chances of matching pertinent answers to your questions about who is doing that which
you propose, and, if they are doing it with product or idea similar to that which you propose
to sell.   The greater the number of resources available to you to define the universe of
your potential new markets the higher is your success rate.  If the Library of Congress and
the other sources you poll has few entries you are on the right path to defining a market
niche no one else has targeted.

5.  Search All Available Sources

     How does a new product review work?   Let's assume your transferable solution
eliminates a bottleneck area.  The area of opportunity for your product is characterized by
long lead times or waits for semi-professional help, time-consuming changeover and setup
because of product variations, varying lengths of run to produce, sporadic quality problems,
and too much absenteeism among key workers.  Underline the key words, add some
synonyms, and send your description to the Science and Technology librarians.  They will
not inundate you with books by return mail.  You will probably be referred to a government
agency, independent Research Facility or University such as a subset of a Federal Agency
or a not-for-profit advisory group.  Hundreds of helpful groups exist to advise you about any
topic that you seek information about.  In turn, one of these might refer you to the Air Force
Materials Lab at Wright Paterson AFB or some such place.  The Materials Lab could
suggest a contact at Cincinnati Milacron or Kearney and Trecker for machining center
enhancement were you marketing such an enhancement or product improvement. 
Another suggestion by any one or all of the foregoing information sourcesmight lead you
to a government funded university technology center.  Your emphasis should be creating
a networking organization and people contacts.  Results of this step can result in shortened
lead time to the marketplace, a more ordered approach to scheduling product transitioning,
less "hit and miss" marketing, and better motivation of your involved employees.  Any one
of these contacts might offer to buy you out for big bucks. 

     Whether you seek out your local library, a university library, the Library of Congress or
any other outside information source, there is an advantage to developing the objectivity
required to gain a meaningful understanding of the sales potential for the product you have
chosen to market.  This step will expand your awareness of transitioning your product/idea
to previously unconceived markets, and provide additional alternatives to optimize your
potential to transfer successfully.

6.  Choosing a Match; Selecting a Winner

     Once choices are presented, make certain that your selection fits the marketplace
requirements as they were originally defined in step three.   If not, review the process you
used and respecify individual objectives.  Should your plans be modified?   Will the product
be satisfactory in the marketplace?  If so, does the chosen product/idea transitioning fit its
potential market as you envision it?   If not, reject a less than perfect fit and start over.  The
lost time will cost less than attempt and expense in time and dollars to market  a misfit.  Be
careful not to let ego color your chances for success.

7.  Market the Transfer Opportunity

     The most important of the many initial activities when marketing the transition product
is creation of a detailed schedule of events ordered the way you want them to occur. 
Simulate the succession of activities that must take place.  If it is a complex transition,
critical events and interdependent activities should be scheduled in detail and monitored.
Manufacturing's Line of Balance, PERT charts or simple time phased bar charts work well
in marketing.   The area's key to your success can be broken out from the schedule and
organized into smaller tasks that can be planned, carried out and monitored in appropriate
detail.

     An activity that can save time and money in several ways calls for a detailed explanation
of how the product you are transitioning will work for the buyer.  Describe the basic
objectives and mundane data on measures, times, and volumes to give the buyer a warm-
fuzzy-feeling about setting up a new way of doing business, i.e., using your product and
paying you to use it.  Use your description of the product as defined in step four as your
basis.

     It is especially important to define the demand on support functions and services -
material handling, maintenance, inspection - so that the technology transitioning of your
new product/idea does not impose on or foul up other operations.  If the demand for
support exceeds existing capabilities, the additional requirement must be calculated and
plans must be made to deal with this newly defined requirement.  This limits your liability.
Too much success can lead to failure, be prepared to meet the support requirements
required to complete successful transitioning to the new marketplace.

8.  Conduct a Post-Audit

     Finally, it makes good sense to conduct a post audit of results, and to adjust and fine
tune the result of your technology transfer with each customer.  This might involve no more
than a post card to see how the buyer has used your product to meet his need.  This effort
not only maximizes productivity and effectiveness, it builds and maintains customer
acceptance and loyalty for the product.  FOLLOW-UP is good selling. It will build your
reputation.   Transfer often works well initially.  Everyone involved is interested in success
so they follow the plan closely, fixing and adjusting.   But as the novelty of the creating
sales wears off, failure to meet goals, or other nagging problems, can turn customer
admiration into unnecessary criticism.

     Essentially, marketing technology transitioning to create new income sources is a
common sense approach to putting tested, job-proven ideas to work in another industry as
they have worked in your plant.

Resume of the Author:

Thomas V. Sobczak, Ph.D., P. E.

     Dr. Sobczak is a Fellow of the Society of Manufacturing Engineers, the Institute for the
Advancement of Engineering and the Institution of Production Engineers.  He has lectured
concerning practical hands-on technological transitioning to create new products world
wide.  In the mid-1986 Dr. Sobczak was named NYS US SBA Innovation Awardee for his
transitioning research.  His writings, lectures and seminars are targeted to managers of
small businesses.  His focus is on "technology transitioning" - a term often referring to the
flow of expertise toward underdeveloped countries, or designating a spinoff product from
a high technology enterprise.  Actually, technology transitioning can take place between
any people, plants, departments in the same corporation, or between related and unrelated
industries.  In this feature, technology transitioning means finding and putting practical,
tested knowledge to work across many industries.  It may involve transfer to a supplier,
another plant, or an applicable segment of technology developed for profit or as a hobby
moved to a place where it creates revenue.  Sobczak has consulted to government and
industry since 1962.  His transitioning tools range from location of data lost in billions of
bytes of government and corporate data base records to open source intelligence
concerning researching and locating products placed in the public domain knowingly and
unknowingly by talkative trusted employees.  Sobczak has saved corporations from
significant revenue losses occurring through the omission of reasonable corporate security
practices concerning manufacturing and marketing processes forgotten over time.